Filmmaker accuses Capcom of ‘stealing’ Resident Evil Village monster design

A Dutch filmmaker has accused Capcom of plagiarising a monster design featured in Resident Evil Village.

Richard Raaphorst published a LinkedIn post this weekend claiming that the Japanese publisher had used a design featured in his 2013 horror film “without authorization”.

[Note: Resident Evil Village monster spoilers follow]

The monster in question is Sturm, a boss who appears mid-way through Village’s story with a giant propeller attached to its torso.

As pointed out by Raaphorst, the Resident Evil boss is visually similar to a creature featured in Frankenstein’s Army, his film which sees Soviet troops invading Germany encounter undead mechanical soldiers created by a mad scientist.

In the movie, the propeller monster is set on fire, much like how players must do the same to the boss featured in Resident Evil Village.

“In 2013 I directed my film Frankenstein’s Army,” Raaphorst wrote. “It’s a crazy monster movie filled with my own creature designs, one of which has been used – completely without authorization or credit in the newest Resident Evil game.”

Raaphorst finished his post by including a set of comparison images showing the Frankenstein’s Army creature and Resident Evil Village’s Sturm, along with hashtags including, “#plagiarism” and “#copyright”.

As noted by one Twitter user, there are several other monster designs featured in Resident Evil Village that resemble creatures featured in Frankenstein’s Army. On Monday Raaphorst replied to the Twitter thread, stating: “Oh dude, this is worse than I thought. First I felt angry, then proud, but now I see this, I feel sad.”

VGC has requested comment from Capcom on Raaphorst’s accusations.

Resident Evil Village enjoyed a strong debut on PC this weekend, comfortably smashing the series’ record for concurrent players on Steam.

The Capcom title debuted with a peak concurrent player count of 101,726, which is significantly higher than Resident Evil 2’s 74,024 peak, and over five times more than Resident Evil 7’s 18,211, according to SteamCharts.

Capcom has said it hopes Village will become the franchise’s best-selling entry, following strong sales of the game’s last numbered entry (8.5m), which is its no. 1 title.

“Our main ambition for this year, although there’s so much going on at the same time, is to make sure Resident Evil: Village will be the best-performing Resident Evil title, both in terms of quality as well as business,” Capcom’s EMEA marketing director Antoine Molant told GI.biz in March.

VGC’s Resident Evil Village review calls Capcom’s horror adventure “a deliciously hammy hybrid of past glories, with some real series highs”.